A good majority of the beginning part of deity work should be nervous system regulation. If you can’t help but feel paranoid you’re wrong or that someone or Something is coming after you, it doesn’t make sense to avoid the topic of communication or discernment skills even while you’re a few years into this work.
If you don’t work with your body and see how it responds to things, how will you know whether or not a Deity is trying to communicate with you if you can’t figure out whether another human is attacking you or not? Especially online when I see several people act as though they have been absolutely scorned by the wicked people on here just because they doubt who they think they are.
Don’t you think if you were actually far enough along to claim the role of priestess/priest or spouse, you wouldn’t care whether or not someone on Tumblr thinks you are or not? You shouldn’t feel the need to shove it in everyone’s faces because you feel like you need to prove something to people.
I can tell you right now that people will know who you are without you needing to tell them if those two things are legitimate. The Gods make things absolutely and irrefutably clear when They lay claim on someone like that. Even those who don’t know the Gods can tell who you are without you even needing to say so.
It is primal human instinct when a God’s energy surrounds someone or something that demands a sort of response to that effect. It then becomes a chain reaction of events that spiral down until something else comes to light as a result of people’s nervous system perceiving the Deity around something or someone else. You don’t really have to prove anything if that was the case - it just happens naturally on its own without the person needing to tell people that’s the case.
All in all, when properly manifested, the Gods become extremely obvious and unquestionably real for humans when They can or want to be. Otherwise, you’re too closed off to tell Who it is that is contacting you let alone that you’re a priestess or spouse. You would need to do a bit more work with your nervous system regulation before you can start touting that you have any executive role as a priestess or spouse - or let alone claiming enough that you’re contacting said Deity in the first place.
What you perceive as energy is a response of your nervous system. Same reason you may get chills while listening to music or cry without realizing it. The Gods’ energy is the same way. That is why Eastern religions and practices all involve different physical and mental activities that are meant to calm and regulate the nervous system to be closer to the Divine (I.e. yoga, meditation, trance-like movement or dance).
Most people in our society do not have regulated nervous systems. In fact, I’d say the majority of Western culture has built up enough of a culture that it is completely rewired to be naturally deregulated given the advent of technology, transportation, and all the things that make your body respond in more hyper-aware states.
Coming into Deity work, it is a given that you are also unregulated regardless of how much trauma you have worked through unless you have also gone through excessive and rigorous work that regulated your nervous system in the first place. These people tend to have an easier time hearing and perceiving the Gods, not because they’re special, but because they’re more in tune with themselves enough. That is the base level.
Once you start venturing into more advanced territory, a certain kind of rewiring takes place that builds up that core foundation. Essentially, once you perceive the Deity, They also activate more of a nervous system response because the moment you attribute that to Them, They are able to manifest more properly and you can more easily determine at the very least What is contacting you and perhaps even Who while you’re at it.
The further along you go, the more the Deity manifests and responds to you, the more you yourself have to adapt to Them and They to you. This can take a lot of time in this day and age. Until you’re properly adapted to be able to sense when a Deity is around regardless of what you’re doing. Whether you’re at work or doing a meditation session, the Deity will likely try to do anything They can to get through to you in whatever way They can. Even if it is just a moment where you let down your defenses enough for Them to be able to throw in a word or two or three. This on its own is not enough for Them to build a relationship with you as it takes too much effort and labor for Them to have to fight tooth and nail with your anxiety or fear or other cognitive functions that work against Their very essence.
Otherwise, this is the reason it takes years - not months or days - of training in order to become a priest/priestess. It can take even longer to become a Spouse because that actually takes a sort of death/rebirth, literal sickness and health, and you must be fully aligned with the Deity to be able to have your nervous system agree with Them long enough that They can be with you all of the time (thus the word marriage), rather than just on a random Tuesday that you’re aware of having Them near enough again.
A Spouse is essentially a permanently wired vessel for the Deity’s energy to live in. Not all Deities want vessels let alone to be chained to a human for the rest of the human lifespan and beyond. I’d say most Deities don’t want that, and, if They did, that’s an awful lot of work to have dozens of people say that They are married to them. At the same time, for the human, you will never function at a normal human capacity again until your time on this earth has finished. The people who go into this want this because they cannot exist without it being so as it is extremely harmful for them to not.
There is no undoing this kind of rewiring - once it is done, it is finished. The human wouldn’t be able to survive being separated for the Deity because the Deity essentially makes a home within the human that is a permanent residence. Like a living shrine. Taking that away for any reason would be unspeakable to both parties. Not to mention the level of boundaries, communication, and endurance both sides need to have in order to maintain a healthy relationship.
So as for the argument that I’ve seen floating around here on Tumblr about spouses being real or not - both sides are very, very wrong. They are real, yes, but I don’t think people realize what kind of work it takes to become something like that, let alone the sacrifices both parties need to make to let it be so. And no, the Spouse wouldn’t need to argue about what they are with some random person on the internet because it is a fact of their existence rather than something they agreed to on a whim.
